


A Future's Past Voyage

by Stefandd10



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Character-Tags-as-I-go-along, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-18 01:05:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18110183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stefandd10/pseuds/Stefandd10





	1. IN SEARCH OF SOMETHING

It was early in the morning, just before dawn. The helicopter approached the target area and was lowering speed. Our squad was silent, aside of the ear-deafening sounds generated by the rotor-blades cutting through the air nothing was said. Upon arriving above our destination we hovered in the air. Beneath us; a large compound with two buildings on either sides, and a large glass ceiling above the middle area. When the ropes were tossed out of the helicopter we all exchanged looks one last time and then decided that we were ready. We jumped. Swiftly taking hold of the rope hanging beneath myself I slid down and landed on one of the structural steel beams where the glass panes were connected to. One after the other I heard all five other members land down onto the glass roof. The compound was enlisted as out-of-use and uninhabited, so we didn’t bother to carefully cut out the glass beneath us, and just smashed it with our boots. After we had two openings large enough to fit every one of us through, we threw the ropes into the building to ease our descent. After entering the building we found ourselves located inside of the middle section of the compound. We were able to see two doors, each presumably leading to their respectable buildings.

After standing about for a few moments, I decided to break the silence and start with the next step of the operation. “Since there are two other parts of the compound we need to search through, I would like to suggest making groups of three to speed this up.” No one said anything; I only received a few nods. We quickly decided the teams and split up. Both sides were identical and practically hideous. The flooring and walls were all completely made out of concrete, and it was hard to tell whether or not those were reinforced due to various places starting to crumble slowly.  
The compound was used as a military facility when it was still operational, however, due to the war a few decades back the military was unable to destroy or safe-keep any of the secret information that was still present. We were brought here to look for anything that would deem useful or could pose threats to our government or entire nation, and assess whether or not there were articles missing or destroyed and report that high-ranking military officials. A quick scan of the first floor on the left side of the compound did not help at all. The place looked ravaged, chairs and desks thrown around as if a huge storm had caused mayhem in the entire building. We were to look through drawers, cupboards and desks for any remaining papers. However, that would prove to nearly impossible since there was paper scattered everywhere. The woman walking slightly ahead of me spoke up for the first time “I suppose we should just report this mess and head straight up for the next floor to see if the same has occurred there.” We agreed and only stayed on the first floor to make sure that the still-remaining drawers didn’t have anything important residing in them, which luckily they didn’t. We headed to the second floor and along the walls of the staircase I had noticed some odd decorative lining following the stairs up. I thought nothing of it, but I had to admit that it looked quite decent.

Upon arriving on the second floor it looked a lot cleaner, and definitely not ravaged. Desks were still neatly put in place and chairs were pushed against them. Aside of the layer of dust that covered the entire room, it looked decent; quite nice actually. The third member of our team spoke up. “We should start with the checking the papers and take all the flash-drives afterwards.” He was new, and despite being talented he was still very inexperienced. Yet we agreed to his suggestion. Before we could begin, however, a crashing sound shook the entire building followed by the sound of glass shattering and falling down. Without saying anything, we immediately ran downstairs and into the middle section of the building. Glass was littered all over the floor and one of the corners of the room had collapsed. I took up the intercom hanging from my belt and held in the button as I spoke, with a steady and calm voice “To team two, is everything in order?” After moments of silence I spoke yet again, harder this time “Team two, do you copy?” After not getting any responds I turned around to face the two behind me, unsure of what to do as if they’re waiting for me to make the decision; “We’re moving in, watch out for the ceilings and walls, there could be debris still coming off from them.” We quickly made our way to the other side of the room to where the other was located. The door itself was still very much intact, so we had hoped there to be no further damage on the other side of that door. But that wasn’t the case; the walls of the narrow hallway leading to the first floor of the other building were nearly completely broken down. It’s steel inner-frame showing from underneath the crippled concrete. ‘I guess they indeed did reinforce the walls.’

I absentmindedly noted as we made our way further along the hallway, reaching the door that led to the first floor of the other building. Before we entered the room we heard unfamiliar voices. They were too far away for us to make out what was being said but they were starting to increase in volume; indicating they were approaching the door that we were currently standing behind. I glanced over my shoulder to see what the others were thinking about our next step. The girl nodded her head backwards, signalling for us to retreat back into our earlier location. We swiftly ran, only lightly stepping on the ground as our shoes muffled our movement, back into the large room separating the two buildings. I ran straight through the glass-littered room and back into the building. Before continuing my way I looked behind me, only to figure out that the guy in our team had ran off on his own. I cursed beneath my breath and was faced with a dilemma; stick together with girl or split up and have her go up the stairs into the second room. Before I was able to make a decision she spoke up “I’m moving up, if anything happens we scream, that should at least trick them into thinking we’ve laid out traps for them.” I could see the hopelessness in her eyes. ‘Who will they pick first?’ Was written all over her face. I knew that giving someone a false sense of hope is not a good thing, however, that didn’t stop me from telling her that we’d still all be going to our favourite café. She gave me a slight apologetic smile as she stood up and, without looking back, made her way to the second floor. Barely after she had disappeared I heard those same voices from before.

I held my breath. The door opened. Footsteps drew near. I turned my head to catch a glimpse of the men who walked in the room in one of the windows that were still intact. I recognized their suits to be hostiles’. I suppose we did make the right decision to hide, as opposed to barge in the room to see what was going on. They stood still, muttered a few words to each other about how thrashed the room was, and almost immediately went up the stairs. Taking my chances I emerged from my hiding spot and snuck back towards room connecting the two separate buildings. I had to make sure we had as many people as we could possibly muster. Thus, making my way into the large room I made my way back to look for the youngster. He had his head pulled from beneath a large concrete slap; I motioned him to move over, signalling to be silent. I pointed towards the other door and he nodded understandingly. For a second time we made our way to the destructed hallway and towards the door. I listened at the door for any of the previous voices and when I heard none I slowly opened the door. 

We entered the first floor and were met by our friends. The same friends that I had sat in a helicopter with on way here, who went to same café as I did and, whom I had known for a long time… Now lay dead, as if scolding us for running away when we could have… no… should have helped them when that was still considerable. We were armed, maybe not sufficiently for a full-scaled attacked, but we were armed none-the-less. My head filled with rage as I stared down at the familiar bodies motionlessly lying on the ground. I had noticed the youngster trembling, his face turning completely white as of one that was about to faint. “Hold yourself together” Sounded a bit too loud, as I had no idea I was the one speaking until after I saw his shocked reaction. I crouched down to check on any sign of life, and after determining all of them and indeed died I stood up. “I doubt she’s still alive, I haven’t heard those men talk after we left that area.” I pondered for a moment, ignoring the frantic movements talking of my teammate and spoke again. “Since the corners of the mid-section are broken and weakened, I think we could actually bury them under the building.” Those men were militaries, not trained demolition specialists. They weren’t all that meticulous about their work, so there was a chance of explosives that hadn’t gone off would be nearby. I had focused my attention on one of the holes deriving from the explosion, and wondered if it may have happened outside of the compound. I went through it and looked around; there was rubble all around the place and it was hard to make up the differences between the ground and walls at this point. However, I still looked for anything that could be used to blow up and destroy the buildings infrastructure. The side where I left through the wall most certainly had nothing that could’ve misfired. I looked inside of some nooks but still found nothing. After a few minutes I decided that it was better to check the other side of the building. It was less damaged and hopefully there were some usable parts. Aside of the few broken windows due to the explosion, nothing was damaged on the other side. I looked around in the area symmetrical to the place where the explosives were most-likely planted and it didn’t take long for me to find some explosives that had been obviously miss-wired onto the wall. I carefully took one off and brought it with me back inside. Even though we did indeed have the explosive that we needed to bring down the wall and with it the centre building, we would need to find a way to set it off since the wires now led to nowhere. When we had gone over the mission back in base, we were told that the building had a self-sufficient power source; a generator residing just below the first floor. I told the youngster of my plan and he nodded slowly, as if trying to come up with a better solution. “I suppose that could work, but the entry to the generator room is located at the other end of the compound…” He stopped mid-sentence and watched the ground “how do you plan on getting past them?” I had pondered for a moment, looking at how the walls and the floor precisely met each other at the ground and took a guess that there was no underlying structure that could easily collapse. I looked at him and then back down to the ground as well. My anger had subsided and I was slowly getting back to a more reasonable state. There was no telling whether or not there were people waiting for us further away from the compound, so trying to run off now could be the same as running straight to our deaths. His leg started shaking, some weird habit of his I noticed during some earlier missions. He’d get nervous and his leg slightly starts to shake, signalling that he was becoming quite nervous to the situation. Thus I regained my composure and spoke up confidently. “We could simply try throwing rocks or other things that create a lot of noise to catch their attention and lure them out of that specific building,” I waited for him to look at me before continuing “we don’t need to wait for all them to come out, just enough for us to make sure we can safely enter the lower area.” His leg had stopped shaking just as quickly as it had started and I felt a wave of relieve wash over me. ‘At least he’s not breaking apart yet.’ I thought. He nodded again, stood up. “Just throwing concrete at the steel beams could work.” He walked over to the door, looked back to me and continued; “I’ve seen a trap-door just behind the staircase in the other building, I guess it leads downwards.” After going through the individual steps we slowly emerged from the room and entered the larger middle area. 

I had connected the wires of the explosive to the wires that were still hanging out of the wall and hoped that they would be connected to the power generator, as there were no clear power sockets left. We moved behind the same concrete slap the youngster had previously hid beneath and picked up a few crippled pieces of concrete on the floor. “We must make a run for it the moment the leave this room again.” He told me right before he threw a piece, barely missing one of the steel bars protruding from the wall and only creating a thudding sound. He missed twice more, but on the fourth throw he smashed a small slab of concrete completely to bits when he finally hit the bar. A loud and echoing clang was heard from the impact and the men in the adjacent room went completely silent. Not soon after they slammed open the door and sped through back through the large room into the other building. We looked at each other is astonishment for a moment before remembering that we were supposed to make a run for it. We pushed the large concrete block we were hiding under up and silently placed it back on the ground before swiftly making our way to the trap-door. Entering it we went down the ladder into a pitch black dark area. We put on our flashlights and tried to find something that resembled a generator. After a few moments we both saw a large machine that took up a lot of space in the small room. On it were just a small amount of buttons and one large lever. “Well, there’s only one way to find out what this does…” I said as I pulled down the lever, meeting nearly no resistance from the old machine. The room started rumbling loudly before quickly reducing itself to just an absent zooming. The lights in the room that were still left untouched came to life and the entire room lit up. We waited a few moments, but the sounds we had anticipated were still not there… “I think the wires aren’t connected properly, it’s not going to go off this way.” I said feeling anger creeping up in me. We didn’t have the time to just put the power out again, let alone walk out of the basement to reattach the wires and put the power back on. The youngster ran towards the ladder and quickly jumped up it. “I’m going to be back in a minute, stay here and make sure the power stays on.” We both knew what he was about to do, but I didn’t stop him. I couldn’t. Perhaps I was selfish in my desire to survive, but I could not bring it up in me to stop him and take his place instead, even if that was the right thing to do, and my responsibility as his senior. The next few moments took ages, I shouldn’t have taken more than just about two minutes, but I still couldn’t but feel as if hours had passed by without anything happening.

At last I could hear the explosion, followed by a shockwave throwing me to the ground, and after that my vision faded to black as my whole body went numb.


	2. COMING TO

I felt a tingling sensation spreading slowly throughout my entire body. My eyes hurt from the intense light that cascaded my eyelids. I turned my away from the light-source and my body, albeit it slowly and painfully, followed suit. I barely felt my limbs as I moved. I heard the small engines of my joints turning and slowly gained consciousness. I opened my eyes slowly, squinting at the brightness of the stone slabs beneath me. My head cleared up quickly after that. After a few moments of rest I decided to get up. As I was starting to rise into a standing position I could feel a sharp pain surging through my head as if I had just lain down for hours and jumped up straight away. I started to look up, a bright blue sky meeting my eyes. Images shot through my head of the previous mission. However, wasn’t the area supposed to be in a forest? It surely wasn’t supposed to be hot, bright, and sunny out here? I moved my feet, grazing of the ground’s surface as I tried to get to the door. I noticed this place looked nearly untouched, unlike the ruins we were sent to in the first place. In search for answers I moved through the door and into a small passageway that had some small openings in it that seemed to let the light from outside through. I moved towards one of them and was shocked. ‘Why is there a desert here?’ I began to feel nauseous as worry spread through my mind. I quickly moved over to the other holes and all I saw was yellow sand beneath clear blue skies. I sat down, frustrated by the entire situation. I checked my pockets for anything that could be of use. ‘Empty… Dammit.’ I exhaled and a small moment later I punched the wall aside of me out of anger ‘Where the hell am I!?’ I gritted out. After about ten minutes I stood up. I had to find people here that were able to help me out. And even if they couldn’t, I’d at least know where I was located. I took a deep breath and made my way through the rest of the passageway, made a right turn and stepped directly outside into the sand. The sand slightly burned my feet whenever I would press down my feet in it. I walked onwards and after a while I came across a few dunes. It would be great to have some leverage over the area to get a better view of my surroundings, so I decided to try and climb one of them. The sun fully shone on my back, and even though it was covered in a suit, I still found the sun’s heat to be near unbearable. At the foot of the dune I stood still for a moment, I looked upwards and noted that it was steeper than it had initially seemed to be. Still, I had to see if there were any people or resources nearby, so I ventured forth. My feet dug into the sand and my knees ached after just three steps. I moved on and dragged my legs up with every step. After another five steps I fell forward, hands digging in to the sand. I firmly dug my feet into the sand crawled further. Looking downwards I could see the heaps of sand that were sliding down every time I pushed up, and wondered if I was going to trip and slide down myself. At last I reached the top. I let myself fall down into the sand and inhaled deeply, regaining my breath. I looked behind me and could see the building I just had walked out of. It seemed to be a small kind of fort. I checked to see if there weren’t any people in there; however, it seemed that I was indeed the only person there. Even when I looked inside of the larger windows there was activity to be seen. I turned my head back around and was met with the same sea of yellow as before. More dunes were ahead of me and it seemed that I was going to be a long journey before I would finally be able to get out of this mess, if I was going to get out of this situation at all. I slowly slid down the sand dune and was given temporary shade from the sun. I rested there and then went on towards the next dunes.

After what seemed to take over half a day of dune-climbing and having tripped twice I reached the top of the fourth dune. I expected to see more sand, I mean I did see more sand, however, besides that I also saw a stone path. Without thinking I let myself slide down the dune and quickly moved towards the road. Relieved to feel firm ground beneath my feet again, I sighed and closed my eyes for a moment. The road was nearly untouched by the sand, which was a good thing, considering it must be used quite often. I didn’t know where exactly I was supposed to move towards, but it didn’t matter much because I was convinced that I was going to meet some people along the way. I continued to walk along the path and quickly felt myself get more and more tired. When it felt like I had been walking for half an hour I had to sit down. My head hurt and my muscles ached, I forcedly laid myself down on the rocks. I was breathing heavily, and the sun completely dried me out. I started to slowly lose consciousness, forgetting my surroundings I involuntarily closed my eyes multiple times reopening them to fight to stay awake as long as that I possibly can. I continued falling asleep and waking up for about an hour until I absentmindedly heard footsteps approaching on the rocks. Before I fell asleep again I was able to hear some of men’s voices, but couldn’t register what was being said.

I woke up again and slowly raised my head, groaning as the headache still tortured me. Opening my eyes I looked around me, we were moving in what seemed like a small carriage pulled by horses. One of the men noticed my wakening up and spoke “Are you alright? There’s a small flash with water at the side of you, you’re free to drink it all up.” Without putting much thought into it I turned to my side and took up the flask. I drank up its contents as the man asked a question. What I was doing here? I knew that I wasn’t supposed to be spilling out confidential information here, so I had to play it safe. I was thinking about the building I came out of and spoke. “I was here to investigate some of the ruins in the area, but I got separated from my group.” The moon looked at me doubtfully but seemed to accept my reasoning anyway. “You have some weird looking clothes though. The Empire sure likes to go all out with their ‘stylish’ looks” Remarked a younger looking guy. “Name’s Eric, by the way, we’re headed for one of outskirt districts outside of the Empire.” After I was given more water and some food, they agreed to drop me off at the Empire’s gates on their way home. I was sitting at the back of the cart in silence, eyes to the ground as I was trying to think about what was going on. An empire, I had no recollections of there being an empire in this time. And this desert was strange as well. I hoped that I was going to be able to see some familiar things when I am going to be under society again.

A few hours later and the desert slowly transformed. More and more plants came into view and eventually trees made their appearance too. Desolate land made way for houses and small villages. It didn’t take long for us to be in what appeared to be a huge tropical zone. “Most of the outskirts are like this, there’s enough room for us to grow crops and live a decent life, but it’s nowhere near as good as in the capital city of Elkenreach.” The man continued to talk about the area. The more I listened to his words the more I got confused about our whereabouts. It is as if I’m not in the same world anymore, but surely that wouldn’t be possible? After all, I couldn’t have been unconscious for long. This disbelief evaporated by the time we reached capital’s gates. Clean white stone walls completely enclosing the capital from all sides. Huge spiralling towers could be seen all over and even just outside the gates business was booming. My eyes widened when I saw all those people dressed in colourfully bright clothes go about. Wherever I was, I was sure of it that it wasn’t my home country, perhaps not even the same world. Eventually the men dropped me off at a small market terrain just outside of the gates. I thanked them each for saving me and waved them off. Without any money on me, it was pointless to try to get something from the market stalls, thus I went ahead and walked over to the city gates. “Halt!” one of the guards beckoned me to stop and approached me. I clenched my teeth and tried to appear as normal as I could. “You don’t look from around here, state your intentions.” I was either going to get refused or I would be walking off myself, so I took my chances and said: “I’m just here looking for business, nothing more.” The guard dressed in full armour hummed and looked at me for a moment before cheering up “Nice to see that business is picking up again, we’re always welcoming to extra labourers, just drop by a few a shops and ask if there’s any work to be done.” He paused for a moment, still not moving away from blocking my path. “Just be sure not to cause any issues, we have strict laws, now then, welcome to Elkenreach.” He promptly moved back to his station and had no further interest to me, so I moved along and entered the city. 

Even in the city itself the place was littered with vegetation, bushes and trees were neatly kept alongside the streets, and the same white stone was used as I had seen on the outer city walls. So, I was here, in a foreign city, in a foreign ‘empire’, in assumedly a foreign world without any idea of what I’m supposed to do. Once again I felt a sense of hopeless creep up in my mind. I had more questions than that I had answers, if I actually had any kind of answer aside of knowing that I’m standing in a place that I don’t know… I sighed and looked around, I noticed people staring at me, I stood out with my black clothes and metal shoes. In any case, I had to find a way to get water and food, and for that I would need to get a job. I moved around a bit and tried a few shopkeepers; however, I got quickly turned down for my odd appearance, saying that I was going to scare off their customers. I went into what seemed to be a florist, an old lady was standing at a small wooden bench neatly cutting the stems at the bottom of the flowers and arranging them into a small bouquet. I hadn’t been saying anything for the first few minutes, and when she looked up after finishing the bouquet she got startled and backed away. “O dear! You gave me quite the scare, I was a bit tired but I sure am awake now.” She jokingly tapped my shoulder. “Well, what can I do for you today?” I explained that I was in need of money and a place to stay, and asked if there was any work that I could do and could get payed for. She curled lips, and tapped on the counter for a few moments. “I’m not sure if I can afford to actually pay for any services done, but if you work for it, you may stay in the shed behind the shop.” Without thinking about it I took the offer. She smiled and led me around the property. The shed was small, but at least it did have bed. We re-entered the workshop which also dubbed as a display. Since I had no experience she told me watch her actions for the first few days before handling the plants myself. During the rest of the way, only a handful of customers had ordered something. The elderly woman named Vivian skilfully put together the people’s orders and thereafter handled payments. She worked with a pattern: Firstly roll out a fitting amount of paper, lay down the flowers on it ordered in a row, then cut the stems to preserve them as long as possible and wrap the paper so that the flowers each fall into their correct spot. She had great eye for knowing how it’d turn out and most of the time she didn’t take longer than she took on just cutting off at the stems and occasionally cutting away any of the excess leaves that had already withered. She often gave advice on how to best preserve the flowers, and told customers right away if some flowers weren’t compatible with each other if they were meant to be kept longer than just a single occasion. She was truly an expert on the field, and even though most of her customers were confined to just locals, she had plenty of business. 

After a few hours the shop closed down and I took initiative of cleaning the workspace. Taking up a broom and started to swiftly gather all the fallen petals and leafs, whilst Vivian had started watering the plants. After we finished, she placed a small pot of water over the fireplace and waited for it to boil. She bounded together some herbs and strung them up with a small piece of rope which she had put into the pot. I took the seat at the counter and brought towards the small table where she was sitting and sat down at the opposite side of her. “The shop isn’t all that much, and it certainly isn’t special, however, I’m able to put a smile on people’s faces and to me that’s more important than just meeting my week’s end.” She gave me a soft smile before she moved her gaze towards the windows. There weren’t many people around at this hour and the city was gradually settling down for dinner time. She stood up and made her way to the small kitchen “I’m going to prepare dinner, could you please properly lock the shop and close the windows?” I stood up and went to the door, made sure it was locked, and then folded the wooden panels over the windows and strapped them together. I took one of the candles and held them near the fire to light it up, and with it I lit the rest of the candles as well.

I felt as I was sent back into the medieval ages, there’s no electricity, nor have I seen anything that’s even remotely modern, just none of this makes any kind of sense to me. Gathering information was seemingly the best thing to do, however, I still had no clue on where I was actually supposed to start. I didn’t know anybody here, the only one that seemed to not immediately distrust me was Vivian. Even the men who took me into their cart had only guessed me to be a local because they don’t often see city people. Hell I didn’t even know who governed this place to start with. I put these things to the back of my mind as a problem of the next morning, I wasn’t going to be able to much at this time of day anyway. Besides, I needed to eat, I hadn’t eaten anything aside of what I was offered at the cart, which was only about two pieces of bread. 

I stared out of the window, the last one I hadn’t yet actually closed, and waited for Vivian to announce that dinner was ready. When she did I quickly strapped it down and came over to the table, where was barely enough room to fit two plates on. To give her proper space I took the plate upon my lap and ignored her remarks. The food wasn’t all too bad, just a few slices of meat that closely resembled pork and a heap of vegetables. After I was halfway through eating my dinner I asked her about her shop. She said that she had always loved gardening when she still lived together with her husband, and that after he had passed away, she not only had time to spare, but also had too much space for one person alone. And so she decided to transform over half of her original home into a florist, mainly to keep her busy and occupied. I was surprised that she hadn’t asked much about me, sure it all a lot easier, but it was odd that she would just take someone in without any kind of background knowledge about that person. I didn’t question it, I had no answers ready for her if she would have asked, and it was unnecessary to do so anyway. 

After dinner I stood up and took of our plates and rinsed them off before putting them back into the cabinet. We sat down for one last cup of tea and after that I said her goodnight and went to the shed. I lowered myself onto the bed and sighed, I looked at the ground for a moment, realization still not quite sinking in. It felt as if I was more so acting on instinct than that I was on rationality. Emergency situations I could handle, even the previous mission wasn’t hard on me mentally. However, I felt quite lost here, there’s no way I can just abandon my past life, nor can I just accept staying here and not doing something about this whole ordeal. Even so I laid myself down onto the thin matrass, sleep swiftly coming over me.


	3. SETTLING IN

The second day went on practically the same as the one before, well aside of the dune climbing and near death experience. Sure I was still heavily out of place, people looking at me strangely because of how I looked and the constant thoughts rising in my head on how to act in this situation. But in a way it felt good to have somewhat ‘relaxed’ day of just doing my business helping around the shop. I was able to take a few orders and note them down for Vivian to prepare. Afterwards we’d drink tea, have dinner and talk about things happening around in the city. I found out that the Empire was currently being ruled by empress Selena, another thing that just didn’t make sense to me. She ruled prosperous and made sure that her people got what they all needed, however not all were happy. There was a rebellion that was slowly eating its way through the empire for about sixty years now, from before Selena was an heir to the throne. She didn’t want to wage an all-out war. She primarily tried to hold peace talks and offer conditions to appease to the rebellion and dim their aggression. However, the rebellion isn’t having any of it and continues throwing threats Selena’s way.

After dinner I stepped outside into the street for a bit, and felt a wave of relieve wash over me as I was able to see the familiar moon hang in the sky. With its spots still facing the earth as it always had; and always will, until the moon drifts too far away from the Earth that is. ‘Perhaps I’ll still find my way back home’ I thought to myself as I went back inside. I made my way to the shed and went to sleep shortly after.

When I woke up, it wasn’t to Vivian telling me to wake up. No, it was to loud arguing and nonsensical name-calling coming from the workshop. I got up and put on my clothes and hurried my way inside. I couldn’t quite follow what was going on, but I was sure I heard something about tax raises and ongoing payments. I opened the door and softly closed it behind me to take the situation in. There was a short, fat man, presumably mid-thirties with one of the City-Guard standing slightly behind him. “The council expects a weekly amount of three hundred silver coins for this property; you ought to pay you this in order keep ownership of the building woman!” Vivian’s face lit up in anger. “Taxes!? You call these taxes!? It was only a few months ago when these so called ‘taxations’ were still only 150 silver coins. You’re not taxing, you’re just robbing us from our money!” She looks downward and her voice lost power. “Look at this place, I’m barely making enough money to get through the week, this isn’t just a shop, this is my home…” I moved closer to her and put a hand on her shoulder. The man continued. “But the council…” I intervened immediately in a calm and collected manner. “The council can, I’m sure that just one person coming short on taxes shouldn’t make much of a difference in the council’s total income, would it? And besides, this isn’t how you properly treat an elderly woman doing her work.” I took a step forward, slowly. “Perhaps you could turn your head around for once, to make up for your behaviour?” I had noticed that people here take pride in their use of etiquette, and gambled that this would be enough to stop the man from pressing Vivian too hard. “Alright, we will look the other way this once, however, it will be noted and this shall not be tolerable a second time.” Without further conversation they the man turned around and beckoned the guard to follow him out the store and back into the city, out on their way to collect the rest of the payments. Vivian sighed and sat down, relief shown on her face. “Tax collectors,” she said “as if they have no soul.” She looked out the window before continuing “The council’s been consistently raising taxes lately,” she grinned “I’m sure the prices have already doubled by now.” I sat down next to her. “Why would they keep raising them, is it because of the rebellion rising up in the west?” She looked back at me and shook her head with a plain expression. “No, the council are significant shareholders in some of the major brands in the city, they raise taxes to clear off smaller firms and use those properties to expand both the privileged brands, and their own economic income.” She abruptly stood back up. “But don’t worry about it; I still have enough resources to get through it for a long time.” She gave me a weak smile and then disappeared back into her kitchen to prepare breakfast.  
The following hours went by smoothly. I’d served about three customers on my own with Vivian watching on from the side, only handing over the requested flowers since I lacked the actual knowledge about them. Trying my best to copy her actions I had failed miserably in trying to correctly roll the bouquet together, and to readjust nearly every flower individually anyway. 

Things had been going well for just about a week, I had gained some information about how the Empire was structured, and confirmed that its existence was surely not possible within the world I personally knew. What had caught my attention the most at the time was how one-sided the news had been about literally anything. There had nothing covering any neighbouring countries, and was only limited to their own elite and a few heinous crimes. I thought that I might have something to do with the fact that they weren’t a ‘normal’ country. I suppose being an empire makes people short-sighted and arrogant. I decided to leave it at that.

However, after that week, another incident had occurred. I had heard rumbling coming from the workshop at night, and when I checked to see if Vivian was doing anything in there I was shocked. The entire place had been rummaged through, plants shoved away from their original places, and pots completely shattered all over the floor. Some of the plants were split, broken or straight up dead. It was truly an unsightly scene; however, the look on Vivian’s face hurt me deeper. 

She was absolutely devastated, her entire investments were ruined and her chances of keeping the building were slimmed even more so. It didn’t get better when we started to clean the mess up, just about a third of what she set for sale in the workshop was beyond saving. We tried to at least save some of the seeds, but they wouldn’t have enough to grow fully before she ran she would run out of money. The following days after she reopened were just as bad. Her voice had stopped being cheerful and spontaneous, instead it was just a soft and monotone sound where the only impression coming across was sadness.


End file.
